


Rhythm

by flight_feather



Series: Heartbeat (Mia Shepard) [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Acceptance, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:27:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7726825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flight_feather/pseuds/flight_feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus discovers something surprising about Shepard's abilities after an unannounced visit to her quarters on the Normandy. Set shortly after Shepard and Garrus are reunited in ME3 and decide to continue their relationship. One shot. Citrus at the end and possible trigger warning for implied past sexual situations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the Mass Effect universe or the rights to the songs quoted. Details of the custom Shepard are mine. No beta, so errors are mine as well. 
> 
> This is my first time publishing something, so constructive feedback is welcome! Thanks for reading :)

Garrus paused as he approached Shepard’s door. It wasn’t the forbidding red of the lock, but the music emanating from within that made him stop with one hand hovering over the door release. 

_You caused the rain, I brought ya pain / But you’re the only one that can save me…_

The music was somehow slow but uptempo, the soulful voice of a human female punctuated with a solid, steady beat. The lyrics continued, plaintive yet hopeful, apologetic yet defiant - much like Shepard lately in the rare, private moments when she escaped the politicians and superior officers, the refugees and the troops, the damn Reapers, and was simply Mia. When she turned to him and let her burdens down for a minute, or an hour. 

_Sometimes I leave you all alone / Sometimes there’s skeletons in my bones / At night I drink way too much / Come home and hit you with a sucker punch / But there’s a light, there’s a light in your window..._

He was starting to worry. Was this about him? Was she still blaming herself for going to trial on Earth, for him getting caught up in the invasion on Menae? Or was it the older guilt he knew she still carried, for dying, and his going to Omega and nearly dying himself? They’d argued over it too many times already, but they’d have it out once more if she tried taking responsibility for that series of events again. 

Garrus tapped his ID code into the door panel and entered as quietly as he could with two bottles of top-shelf liquor in one hand, cautious with the memory of the last time he’d startled her in an off mood, right before that mess on Aratoht.

He couldn’t have anticipated the sight that greeted him. Nobody who knew Shepard - who thought they knew her - would have. 

Silhouetted by the pale blue glow of the fish tank, Shepard’s tawny backside, clad only in a scanty pair of lacy panties the exact same shade of blue as his colony markings, twisted and swung in a slow, seductive rhythm along with the beat. One outstretched hand held a half-full glass perfectly level as she dipped and flowed, cocking a hip only to swivel to the other in a breathtaking display of rhythm and coordination that he thought her capable of only on the battlefield. The other hand appeared to be caressing her breast, her head tipped back slightly.

His breath caught in his throat, then loosened as his subvocals involuntarily released a thrumming growl of want that should have been too far below human hearing range for Shepard to catch. Either her cybernetic upgrades including hearing enhancements he hadn’t been aware of or her battle-honed instincts caught the feeling of a presence behind her, because she whirled suddenly with an expression that said she would utterly destroy whomever had come upon her - her current state of undress doing nothing to diminish the momentary panic he felt at having that look directed at him.

“Garrus!” she yelped, the murderous look of Commander Shepard, Savior of the Citadel and Destroyer of the Collectors, melting into surprise and...embarrassment? 

For a moment they stood looking at each other with expressions of shock. She clearly hadn’t been expecting him tonight - no surprise there, he’d expected the latest round of calibrations to take all night and had told her so - and he hadn’t known she could dance. Use her flexibility to keep pace with his reach, oh yes. Flow through a battle under a stealth cloak, pinpointing enemies for her squadmates to demolish with tech or biotic powers while she scoped out the next target for her Black Widow, absolutely. But every time the crew had gone out to a club, she had been the butt of every joke, everyone wondering how a woman who was otherwise so gifted in the movement of her body could fail so spectacularly on the dance floor.

Clearly, because she made an effort.

“I had no idea -” 

“I didn’t realize -”

They stopped, staring slightly awkwardly at each other. Garrus wondered if he shouldn’t have taken Shepard’s open invitation to her quarters at face value. The song continued in the background, until Shepard reached for the control and switched it off. 

“Come on in,” she said, uncharacteristic shyness in her eyes. “I thought you’d be on the guns all night so I -”

“Learned how to dance? I see that...” he broke in. “Shepard, all those clubs, all that dancing like a pyjack on fire -”

She darted up the stairs and grabbed his free hand, dragging him in so the door could close. “Nobody can know,” she begged, gripping his hand. 

“Absolutely. Spirits know what that new guy - Vega? - would do if he knew,” Garrus teased. He chuckled when Shepard flushed, the color washed out from the tank’s flat glow but the sudden heat in her cheeks and neck picked up by his visor. He glanced to the side in apparent nonchalance, knowing that it would be easier to avoid her stubborn side if she didn’t feel directly approached. “But now that I know…Shepard, you know I would never pry if it’s something you don’t want to talk about...”

He would let it drop if she truly didn’t want to talk about it, but while she was well-practiced in deception she rarely used it with him and he couldn’t help being curious. 

When he glanced down, she was chewing at her lower lip the way she did when she was thinking and nervous enough to forget to keep her Commander face on. He wrapped his arms around her and rumbled reassuringly, tucking her head under his chin. She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed as she took a deep breath in, sighing it out in a huff. 

“Fine. But only because when I was on my way to Palaven, I swore to the Spirits or whoever would listen that if you were okay, and I could have you back in my life, I’d never allow another situation like with Sidonis, where I didn’t let you make your own decision. I’d do everything I could for us to be truly equal partners. I love you, and I want you to know me. Know all of me.” 

Garrus pulled back slightly and cocked his head to the side, considering her. He had hoped during their long separation that she felt as strongly about him as he did about her, but he hadn’t realized her feelings for him ran that deeply. It was humbling, and gratifying. Turians mated for life and he had, in his more insecure moments, feared that the galaxy’s saviour could do better than a cross-species relationship with a recalcitrant C-Sec officer and failed vigilante. Even if said individual was now Expert Reaper Advisor to the Turian Hierarchy.

“Only if you want to. You know I can’t resist investigating a cover-up,” he replied in mock-seriousness, flapping his mandibles unevenly so she’d understand he was joking.

She looked up at him a moment before downing the rest of her drink, not quite meeting his eyes. “Is that shochu?” she asked, gesturing to the bottles in his hand.

“The finest from Earth for my girl,” he said, proffering the bottle with an elegant script.

“You naughty turian,” she murmured. “Who did you have to kill to get a bottle of this?”

Garrus shrugged, a human gesture he’d picked up somewhere in his first tour with Shepard. “Moving up in the Hierarchy has to have some perks, right?”

“Mmmm,” she hummed agreeably, pouring herself a healthy splash and settling on the couch. He followed suit with the turian brandy he’d brought and settled alongside her. She hadn’t put any clothes on, and he couldn’t help eyeing her long, if oddly-folding, legs and trim waist. She was smirking when his eyes met hers and he briefly wondered if she had intended the distraction. Probably.

Two could play this game. He fixed her with the intent gaze that he used to break criminals with at C-Sec. She withstood for a few seconds before squirming and taking a sip of her shochu. Definitely guilty, or at least feeling guilty about something; whatever it was might not even be her doing. He knew she had a noble streak that led her to take personal responsibility for events that weren’t her fault. His stint on Omega and solo battle to prepare the Hierarchy for the Reaper invasion case in point. 

“So. The dancing,” she started, hesitantly. “I...you know about Mindoir, right?” 

Garrus reflected for a moment, slightly thrown by the topic. “Batarians attacked the colony. Your family was killed and you escaped, eventually finding your way back to Earth and then into the Alliance,” he supplied as blandly as possible. As close as they were, as many secrets as they had shared, he knew no more about those years than anyone could pull off the extranet. She didn’t bring it up, and he didn’t push, having dealt with the survivors of slaver attacks during his mandatory service in the turian military and knowing how deeply those scars could run.

“That’s the broad outline, yes,” she confirmed, swirling the liquor in her glass. “What most people don’t know - nobody other than Anderson really knows - is what happened after the Alliance shipped me back to Earth.” The drink swirled and swirled as she avoided his eyes. He took a sip of his own brandy, not wanting to pressure her but worried by the spikes in her heart rate that his visor was picking up. 

“I hated it there immediately. My foster brother...he had ideas. About how I should show my gratitude for the family taking in a poor, orphaned colony girl.” She was shaking, and Garrus could guess where it was going. “It’s okay, Shepard. We don’t have to -”

“No, I want to tell you this. I don’t want it to bite me in the ass later, coming from someone who dug into the past of the great Commander Shepard trying to bring me down. No.” Her eyes flicked up to his and then back down. “And like I said, I want you to make your own decision about being with me. So. I ran off when nobody believed me about the foster brother. But when you’re not quite seventeen with no money in the city, trying to use a fake name, you can’t get far. I did odd jobs for a while in the spaceport district, and eventually found steady work. At an underground club.” She paused and Garrus considered that for a moment. 

“I’m assuming you don’t mean as door staff,” he quipped lightly. She flinched and pulled into herself. “No,” she whispered. “First, doing table service. Later, when I turned 18, as a dancer.” She glanced up at him again before drinking deeply and finishing her glass. “I was good, Garrus, I pulled in more money in a night than we’d made in a month on the colony, even in that shitty little place,” she continued in a rush. He believed it, considering the small sample he’d seen. “The club took most of it, but I could afford to finish school and had a place to stay. Then one night, not long after I started dancing, some local cops came in. They cornered one of the other girls, started roughing her up when she refused to offer...extra favors. The bouncers wouldn’t touch these guys, and I couldn’t just stand there and let them hurt her. I told them to back off. They said they’d take me in her place. I didn’t want to. But there were two of them, and I didn’t know how to fight yet, and the other girl was new, fresh off the street. I remembered when it was me in her shoes, scared and not knowing how to handle bastards like that.” 

Tears were running down her face now, her lips pulled back in a snarl of rage, and Garrus pulled her to him. “Shhh, Shepard. It’s okay. I’m sorry I asked, I had no idea…” She shook in his embrace and curled into as small a ball as she could; distantly, a part of his mind was still amazed at how compact humans could make themselves. He tightened his arms around her, understanding suddenly that her casual nakedness earlier was a defiant reflex from darker days, owning her self so that others could not. A sob escaped her and he squeezed even tighter, a protective growl escaping him. She flinched again and he cursed mentally, realizing that she might have mistaken it for anger in her agitated state.

“Shepard,” he murmured into the soft, brown curls at the crown of her head, “you know this doesn’t change what I think of you or how I feel about you, right? You’re still my Shepard. You’re still my girl, and my Commander, and I will follow you to the ends of the galaxy, into hell and back, for as long as you want me at your six.” 

The sobs became an abrupt hiccup. “You...you still want to be with me?” she asked, suddenly looking up at him with renewed hope in violet eyes shining with tears. He clicked his mandibles in admonishment. “Of course,” he said gently, wiping a tear from her cheek. “You’re a survivor, Shepard. You do what needs to be done to keep your people safe and make it home at the end of the day. I won’t pretend I’m not shocked at where that’s taken you, and eventually I want to hear the story of how you went from dancing to Alliance military, but I’m honored that you trusted me with the truth instead of making up some story about a girl’s night out at a pole dancing class with Liara and Tali.”

A surprised sound escaped her and he took advantage of the lightening mood to scoop her up into his arms, carrying her the brief steps to the bed. “Can you imagine Liara at a pole dancing class?” she cackled suddenly, her relief at his easy acceptance apparently manifesting itself in giddiness. He had a chuckle at the thought as well as he deposited her against the pillows and reclined next to her. “By the goddess!” he exclaimed in a high falsetto that set Shepard into peals of laughter. He could never understand why she found him funny - most turians didn’t, to be sure - but it pleased him immensely that he could bring that bright sound out of her, especially now. 

She was eyeing him again as she calmed. “I feel better now that you know,” she said solemnly. “The job was awful and so was...what happened...but I enjoyed the dancing, losing myself in the beat. Had to put it behind me when I joined the Alliance. Then somehow I became this poster-girl for the perfect human soldier after Akkuze, and it was even more important to hide it because it’s hard enough to be a woman in the military without having been an honest-to-God stripper as well…”

Garrus shook his head. “I will never understand human gender politics or sexual attitudes.” She waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively, the confidence of Commander Shepard slowly coming back to her face but the secret mischievousness of Mia filling her eyes. “Lucky for me that I fell for a turian then.” Her grin turned to pure wickedness as she mused, “I guess that means you don’t want to take advantage of your newfound knowledge of my skills then?” 

His jaw dropped, mandibles flaring in alarm. “Uh...I mean...I wouldn’t go that far, if you’re offering that is…if you want to...”

She slid fluidly off the bed, clicking the music back on as she did. A new song came on, more last-century Earth music, the throbbing beat and snapping percussion inspiring Shepard into a sinuous wind that immediately brought pressure back behind his plates. 

_Tell me, I need to know, where do you wanna go? / 'Cause if you're down, I'll take it slow / Make you lose control…_

He swallowed hard as she crawled back up the bed, unsuccessfully attempting to stop the rumbling sound of want that started back up in his chest as her hands slid over the sensitive skin of his waist. Shepard heard it, or sensed it, and snaked her fingers up to that place under his fringe while grinding on his lower plates and nipping at the hide of his neck with her blunt little human teeth. 

It was too much, and he groaned as he felt his plates slide open. One of her hands with its too-many fingers caught his cock as it emerged, stroking firmly while the other continued under his fringe. “Shep- Shepard,” he gasped, then, “Mia,” when she showed no sign of stopping. She paused at his use of her given name and met his eyes steadily for the first time that evening. The bright purple color was still startling enough sometimes that he lost himself in them, and did so now before remembering that he needed to ask her something.

“Are you sure? You want this, now?” He wanted her, badly, but would never forgive himself if he took advantage of her after what she had shared. He wasn’t _that_ bad a turian.

For a moment she looked like she was trying not to cry again, and while he hadn’t quite grasped the myriad triggers for tears in humans, he knew her smile was full of love. “Garrus, I want this now, with you, more than anything.” 

It was all the permission he needed. The lacy panties were shredded and she shrieked in a very un-Shepard-like manner as he flipped them, pinning her beneath him, before erupting into giggles that swiftly turned to moans as he slid down to taste the wetness between her thighs. When the moans became begging repetitions of his name, he nipped his way back up her torso, pausing to nibble a nipple with his mouthplates, and entered her, burying himself in her slick warmth as she screamed his name and arched into him. 

He was tender but intense, letting his subvocals hum his love and desire for her. He wasn’t sure she had the hearing or the knowledge to understand them all, but she could feel the vibrations and had an uncanny ability to read him. She’d know. 

When she shuddered her climax and raked his waist with her short nails he let himself finish, knowing she liked it when they peaked together.

The music had continued to another song and he paid it half a mind as he gathered her into his arms.

_You and me together / we chase this dream forever / the stars align whenever you are next to me…_

That sounded about right. He sighed in contentment, squeezing her briefly as she snuggled back closer into his embrace, her softer, more flexible body allowing them to fit into a configuration that would never have worked with another turian. 

“Thanks, Garrus,” he heard her mumble sleepily. 

“For what?” he rumbled, equally sleepy.

“For following me, and loving me,” she trailed off, her breathing gone heavy with sleep.

“I always will, Shepard,” he whispered, switching the music off. He couldn’t protect her from everything, but this - comforting her, accepting her - this, he could do.


End file.
